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Right of asylum (or political
asylum, Greek: ἄσυλον[1]) is an ancient
juridical notion, under which a person persecuted for political opinions or
religious beliefs in his or her own country may be protected by
another sovereign
authority, a foreign country, or Churchsanctuaries (as in medieval times). Political
asylum should not be mistaken with modern refugee law, which rather deals with
massive influx of population, while the right of asylum concerns
individuals and is usually delivered in a case-to-case basis.
However, the two may somehow overlap, since each refugee may demand
to be accorded on an individual basis political asylum. This right
has its roots in a longstanding Westerntradition—although it was already recognized
by the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Hebrews—Descartes went to the Netherlands, Voltaire to England, Hobbes to France (followed by many English nobles during
the English
Civil War), etc; each state offered protection to foreign
persecuted persons.

Medieval right of asylum

Many ancient peoples, including the Egyptians, the Greeks, and
the Hebrews, recognized a religious "right of asylum," protecting
criminals (or those accused of crime) from legal action to some
extent. This principle was later adopted by the established
Christian church, and various rules developed to qualify for
protection and just how much protection it was.

According to the Council of Orleans in 511, in
the presence of Clovis I,
asylum was granted to anyone who took refuge in a church, in its
dependences or in the house of a bishop. This protection was given to murderers, thieves or people accused of
adultery. It also
concerned the fugitive slave, who would however be handed back to his
owner if this one swore on the Bible not to be cruel. This
Christian right of asylum was confirmed by all following councils.

In England, King Ethelbert made
the first laws regulating sanctuary in about 600 A.D. By the Norman era
after 1066, there had evolved two kinds of sanctuary: all churches
had the lower-level kind (sanctuary within the church proper), but
only churches licensed by the king had a broader version (sanctuary
in a zone surrounding the church). There were at least twenty-two
churches with charters for a broader kind of sanctuary, including
Battle Abbey, Beverley (see image, right),
Colchester, Durham, Hexham, Norwich, Ripon, Wells, Winchester Cathedral, Westminster
Abbey, and York
Minster.

Sometimes the criminal had to get to the church itself to be
protected, and might have to ring a certain bell there, or hold a
certain ring or door-knocker, or
sit on a certain chair ("frith-stool"), and some of these items survive at
various churches. In other places, there was an area around the
church or abbey, sometimes extending as much as a mile and a half,
and there would be stone "sanctuary crosses" marking the boundary
of the area; some of those still exist as well. Thus it could
become a race between the felon and medieval law officers to the
nearest sanctuary boundary, and could make the serving of justice
upon the fleet of foot a difficult proposition.

Church sanctuaries were regulated by common law. An asylum
seeker was to confess sins, surrender weapons, and be placed under
the supervision of the head of the church or abbey where they had
fled. They then had forty days to make one of two choices:
surrender to secular authorities and stand trial for the alleged
crimes, or confess their guilt and be sent into exile (abjure the realm), by the
shortest route and never return without the king's permission.
Anyone who did come back could be executed by the law and/or excommunicated by the Church.

If the suspect chose to confess their guilt and abjure, they
would do so in a public ceremony, usually at the gate of the church
grounds. They would surrender their possessions to the church, and
any landed property to the crown. The coroner, a medieval official,
would then choose a port city from which the fugitive should leave
England (though the fugitive sometimes had this privilege). The
fugitive would set out barefooted and bareheaded, carrying a wooden
cross-staff as a symbol of protection under the church.
Theoretically they would stay to the main highway, reach the port
and take the first ship out of England. In practice, however, the
fugitive could get a safe distance away, abandon the cross-staff
and take off and start a new life. However, one can safely assume
the friends and relatives of the victim knew of this ploy and would
do everything in their power to make sure this did not happen; or
indeed that the fugitive never reached their intended port of call,
becoming a victim of vigilante justice under the pretense of a
fugitive who wandered too far off the main highway while trying to
"escape."

Knowing the grim options, some fugitives rejected both choices
and opted for an escape from the asylum before the forty days were
up. Others simply made no choice and did nothing. Since it was
illegal for the victim's friends to break into an asylum, the
church would deprive the fugitive of food and water until a
decision was made.

Henry VIII changed the rules of
asylum, reducing to a short list the types of crimes which were
allowed to claim asylum. The medieval system of asylum was finally
abolished entirely by James I in 1623.

During the Wars of the Roses, when the Yorkists
or Lancastrians would suddenly get the upper hand by winning a
battle, some adherents of the losing side might find themselves
surrounded by adherents of the other side and not able to get back
to their own side. Upon realizing this situation they would rush to
sanctuary at the nearest church until it was safe to come out. A
prime example is Queen Elizabeth Woodville, consort of Edward IV
of England:

In 1470, when the Lancastrians briefly restored Henry
VI to the throne, queen Elizabeth was living in London with
several young daughters. She moved with them into Westminster
for sanctuary, living there in royal comfort until Edward
IV was restored to the throne in 1471 and giving birth to their
first son Edward V during that time. When
King Edward IV died in 1483, Elizabeth (who was highly unpopular
with even the Yorkists and probably did need protection) took her
five daughters and youngest son (Richard, Duke of York) and again
moved into sanctuary at Westminster. To be sure she had all the
comforts of home, she brought so much furniture and so many chests
that the workmen had to knock holes in some of the walls to get
everything in fast enough to suit her.[1]

Since the 1990s, sexual persecution has come to be
accepted in some countries as a legitimate category for asylum
claims, when the claimant can prove that the state is unable or
unwilling to provide protection.

Some believe that the development in the 20th century of
bilateral extraditiontreaties has endangered the right of asylum,
although international law considers that a state has no
obligation to surrender an alleged criminal to a foreign
state, as one principle of sovereignty is that every state has legal
authority over the people within its borders. Indeed, a state
granting the right of sanctuary to an asylee will summarily and
categorically reject a request of the country they fled from to
extradite them, regardless of any extradition treaty. This is due
to the fact that to be granted sanctuary by a state indicates that
the state granting sanctuary regards the asylee as being illegally
persecuted by the nation they fled from. Rendering the true victim
of persecution to their persecutor is a particularly odious
violation of a principle called non-refoulement, part of the customary and trucialLaw of Nations.

Right
of Asylum in France

Political asylum is recognized in France (droit
d'asile) by the 1958 Constitution. It has been
restricted due to immigration policies with the December 30,
1993 law, the Debré law of April 24, 1997, the May
11, 1998 law and the December 10, 2003 law. Henceforth, critics,
including the Human Rights League
(Ligue des droits de l'homme - LDH) have opposed what they
see as a practical abandonment of a longstanding European judicial
tradition.

On a purely judicial level, only four conditions may be opposed
to the accordance of political asylum to someone who has proven
being subject to persecution in their country: the presence of the
alien represents a serious threat to public order; the
request should be addressed by another sovereign state; the request
has already been accepted in another state; or the request is an
abuse on the system of political asylum.

The December 10, 2003 law has limited political asylum, giving
two main restrictions:

it invented the notion of "internal asylum": the request may be
rejected if the foreigner may benefit from political asylum on a
portion of the territory of the state

Thus, although the right of political asylum has been conserved
in France in spite of the various anti-immigration laws, it has
been restricted to some extent. Some people claim that, apart from
the purely judicial level, the bureaucratic process is also used to slow
down and ultimately reject what might be considered as valid
requests. According to Le Figaro, France granted 7,000 people
the status of political refugee in 2006, out of a total of 35,000
requests; in 2005, the OFPRA in charge of examining the legitimacy
of such requests granted less than 10,000 from a total of 50,000
requests.[3]

Numerous exiles from South American dictatorships, in particular
from Augusto
Pinochet's Chile and Argentina, were received in the 1970s-80s. As
a current example, since the 2001 invasion of
Afghanistan, tens of homelessAfghan refugees waiting to be accorded
political asylum have been sleeping in a park in Paris near the Gare de l'Est train station.
Although their demands haven't been yet accepted, their presence
has been tolerated. However, since the end of 2005, NGOs have been noting that the
police separate Afghans from other migrants
during raids, and expel in charters those who
have just arrived at Gare de l'Est by train and haven't
had time to make the demand for asylum (a May 30, 2005 decree
requires them to pay for a translator for helping them in official
formalities) [3].

Right of asylum in the
United States

The United
States honors the right of asylum of individuals as specified
by international and federal law. A specified number of legally definedrefugees, who apply for refugee
status overseas, as well as those applying for asylum after
arriving in the U.S., are admitted annually.

As noted in the article specifically about asylum and refugees in the
United States, since World War II, more refugees have found
homes in the U.S. than any other nation and more than two million
refugees have arrived in the U.S. since 1980. During much of the
1990s, the United States accepted over 100,000 refugees per year,
though this figure has recently decreased to around 50,000 per year
in the first decade of the 21st century, due to greater security
concerns. Still, of the top ten countries accepting resettled
refugees in 2006, the United States accepted more than twice as
many as the next nine countries combined. As for asylum seekers,
the latest statistics show that 86,400 persons sought sanctuary in
the United States in 2001.[4]

However, greater security concerns have also slowed the
processing and acceptance of Iraqi refugees seeking political
asylum in the United States since 2003. The Foreign Policy
Association reported that "Perhaps the most perplexing component of
the Iraq refugee crisis... has been the inability for the U.S. to
absorb more Iraqis following the 2003 invasion of the country. To
date, the U.S. has granted less than 800 Iraqis refugee status,
just 133 in 2007. By contrast, the U.S. granted asylum to more than
100,000 Vietnamese refugees during the Vietnam War." [5]

American citizens
granted asylum abroad

Holly Ann Collins, together with her three children, were the
first Americans to be granted asylum in the Netherlands, in June
1994, on the grounds of abuse. The family were in transit to New Zealand when they
deplaned in the country, and sought asylum. This was granted three
years later, for humanitarian reasons.[6] Chere
Lyn Tomayko has been granted asylum in June 2008 in Costa Rica for
kidnapping Alexandria Camille Cyprian (born 1989) in 1997 for
escaping alleged domestic violence. Tomayko's accounts of domestic
violence were refuted by several accounts in the U.S.

Article 28: Social
order·Article 29.1: Social
responsibility·Article 29.2: Limitations of human
rights·Article 29.3: The supremacy of the
purposes and principles of the United NationsArticle 30: Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as
implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any
activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of
the rights and freedoms set forth herein.